The days of a lone router barfing WiFi signal in every direction from a corner of your house are over!

In a home full of smart bulbs, voice assistants, cameras, streaming TV, music and more, a strong WiFi network is the backbone. This month, we made the jump from 3-year old “antennas and a black box” router to Google WiFi, a mesh network system. Yes, it’s more expensive up front than renting a modem/router from your ISP, but it’s an investment that instantly paid off in terms of reduced frustration and faster response times on all our smart home systems and high tech toys.

What is mesh networking?

A mesh WiFi network is like a router + repeaters. The “mesh” part refers to how the signal is spread further and more evenly throughout a space. Your device is automatically and seamlessly “handed off” from one WiFi point to another, so you’re always connected to whichever one will give you the strongest signal.

It’s still a normal WiFi network – you can name it, put a password on it, secure it, and your devices won’t be able to tell the difference.

Mesh networking equipment for the home has exploded in popularity (and plummeted in price!) over the last couple of years. These systems include Google WiFi, Eero, Netgear Orbi, Linksys Velop, and more. Prices range from a couple hundred to over $500 for a starter kit, but the general idea is the same. One “node” or “point” acts as your router, the rest exist to spread the signal further.

WiFi points pick up WiFi signal from other nearby points and repeat it with minimal degradation to signal strength.

Mesh networking systems come with built-in QoS (quality of service – ie: sacrificing your PC’s download speed so your Netflix stream doesn’t buffer all night) and are designed for loads of devices making demands simultaneously. This innovation is well-timed, because home automation enthusiasts (like us) spent those same years packing their networks with Hue bulbs, smart speakers, voice-activated assistants, and streaming devices.

Why we switched to mesh

We just moved to a new house, an 1800-square-foot single-story house with the router at one end and all our computers and WiFi-hungry devices at the other end.

Network congestion and signal degradation with our not-that-old Netgear router made it so we couldn’t dim our lights if our Playstation was downloading updates, printer jobs randomly disappeared, our baby monitor camera took ages to connect to, and our voice-activated assistants (Echo and Google Home both) were having trouble communicating with WeMo and Hue.

Basically, our old router was no match for whatever our 1980’s-era walls are made of, and pretty much everything we own sits between our router and our WiFi devices.

What is Google WiFi?

Google WiFi is a replacement for your home network’s router. Pick one of these (they’re all the same) and use it in place of your router. Place the other two elsewhere in your home (more on that later) to extend the signal.

The “satellite” nodes only need a power cord, no additional wires, to repeat the signal. Instead of multiple side-by-side networks like you get with WiFi extenders and many modern routers that split the signal into two bands, the Google WiFi network has one name. Both the 2.4ghz and 5ghz band are combined under one name, and devices automatically connect to a suitable band.

One of our Google WiFi points next to our TV and sound bar remote for scale.

Each additional node you add to your “mesh” carries the signal further. By default, a single WiFi point can carry the signal about 1000 feet.

If you’ve dealt with flaky WiFi repeaters in the past, these are effortless by comparison. There are no antennas to point and setup is fast since the “extenders” are designed to be a part of the network by default.

Installing Google WiFi

Installation took us about 40 minutes. That includes opening the box, taking photos, removing the old router, putting the Google WiFi in its place, placing the two additional WiFi points, and patting ourselves on the backs.

Installation was easy.

Any node can become the primary WiFi point (the one that replaces your old router). Take the Ethernet cable that runs from your modem to your router and plug it into the Google WiFi point instead. Plug in the power adapter.

Setup network name and QR code are on the bottom of every WiFi point.

The power cables and adapters are one unit – alas, not USB (in case you have one of those nice USB power strips). However, the adapters are relatively slim and probably won’t hog too much space on your power strip.

Good news for crowded power strips: the Google WiFi point adapters are slim and relatively small.

There’s just one “outgoing” Ethernet port. We used it to connect to our Philips Hue Hub.

The rest of the installation takes place in the Google WiFi app, using a Bluetooth connection to the WiFi point. WiFi points are added by scanning their QR codes.

Scan the WiFi point’s QR code to add it to the network.

I was dreading a scenario in which we had to individually re-add every single Echo, Google Home, Philips Hue lightbulb, camera, etc. to our new Google WiFi network. That didn’t happen, because we used the same network name and password for our new network. Most of our devices hopped over on their own. The only devices that had to be manually re-connected to the network were the devices that had been set to only use the 5ghz band of the old network.

Physical design

The overall design and attention to detail on the WiFi point hardware itself is excellent.

The units feel durable, with a good weight to them. They have thin rubber “feet” in two arcs on the bottom to help them stay in place. The power cords are generous in length – maybe 5 feet each.

The light strip around the center can be dimmed or completely turned off. With the lights turned off, our toddler doesn’t seem to notice them (which is a relief – she was fascinated by our old router and all its blinking lights).

On the back/bottom is a cut-out for wires, so you don’t end up with wires sticking out in every direction from your primary WiFi point.

How we arranged our Google WiFi points

The conventional wisdom seems to be that the WiFi points should be in a straight line through your house. We found that impractical for our house’s design, so we put ours in a triangle shape instead.

Internet signal comes in near the garage and gets boosted all over the house by the three WiFi points

To give you a sense of how powerful a single point is, the Yi camera in the baby’s room keeps putting itself on the primary WiFi point in the living room. The primary point emits a strong enough 2.4ghz signal that the baby’s room WiFi point is unnecessary for the camera.

However, the Yi camera is a 2.4ghz device, not a 5ghz device. 5ghz is stronger, but doesn’t travel quite as far, so devices that can use the 5ghz network (such as our phones) still benefit from the node placed in the baby’s room.

Each point spreads its signal somewhere between 500 and 1000 feet, according to Google. Actual performance varies due to building materials, presence of walls, and other factors.

What’s improved now that we’re on Google WiFi

Here’s what got better for us:

Stronger signal in the master bedroom

Faster download/upload speeds in the master bedroom

No more micromanaging which devices are on which network bands (2.4ghz or 5ghz)

Instant connection to our Yi camera streams

Hue bulbs don’t become “unreachable” while downloading – with our Netgear router, we often lost connection to our Hue bulbs while downloading game updates

Devices no longer seem to be dropping off the network randomly

Music streaming no longer cuts out randomly (this was a problem with both Spotify and Amazon Music)

Better insight into which devices are using bandwidth, and how strong their signal is

“on.here” URL lets anyone on our network control our Hue lights, even if they don’t have the Hue app (great for when the baby’s grandparents are over)

5ghz band everywhere! It used to taper off right around where we have our TV and computers

In the near future we’ll be setting up Google WiFi at my parents’ house, which is considerably larger, with 2 stories plus a basement. We will update this review after we see how it performs in their home.

The Google WiFi app is sweet, too

If you have an old-school router you’re probably used to going to 192.168.0.1 (or a branded URL or similar) to access your router, and then having to log in with credentials you forgot about 2 minutes after you set them up.

That’s all gone now – just open the Google WiFi app and there’s everything you need.

On the left: more shortcuts to network features. On the right: setting one of our gaming consoles as a priority device.

It’s easy to add other people as “managers” (through their Google account), too, so you don’t end up in a situation where only one person can (or knows how to) get into the router.

Here are just a few of the things that are easy to do in the Google WiFi app:

Set a priority device for X hours

View all the connected devices, by name (which you can easily customize)

Pause WiFi access per device and/or by groups of devices

Set up a Guest WiFi network so your grubby guests can be quarantined

Perform a network test

See “patch notes” from recent updates to the app and firmware

This meets our needs fine. If there’s any feature we miss, it’s being able to micromanage QoS (quality of service) by setting certain devices as higher priority than others. (This was a feature we liked on our ASUS Wireless-AC1900, the router we set up at our weekend place and our parents’ homes.)

Google WiFi’s advanced networking features

Google WiFi strives to be “set it and forget it” but it’s still got many useful “advanced” features, including:

Device mode – switch to Bridge mode to resolve a Double NAT problem, with some caveats

Google WiFi offers some advanced features for special situations

Device Sharing gives easy access to Philips Hue (and other systems)

The Google WiFi network comes with a neat feature called Device Sharing – just type on.here into your browser’s address bar on your phone or computer to get access to some home automation devices on your network.

Philips Hue is integrated with Google WiFi. You can turn lights on/off and change their color through this web portal, no additional credentials needed.

What doesn’t Google WiFi do?

Google WiFi is a powerful “set it and forget it” system, where features that we now expect (such as 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands) come standard, but with fewer micromanagement opportunities.

You no longer have to (get to?) pick between the 2.4ghz and 5.0ghz bands. Your devices will automatically choose which one to be on. If you want to be really strict about which device(s) go on which band, you won’t have that level of control with Google WiFi.

With Google WiFi, you can only set priority to one device – and it expires after 4 hours. We can’t set both our computers or PlayStations to be high priority devices at the same time. There’s no granular QoS exposed to the user.

On the bright side, since upgrading to Google WiFi we haven’t seen the QoS-related problems we were having with our Netgear router while simultaneously streaming music and downloading game updates.

A few more things: There’s no dynamic DNS or auto-renewing dynamic DNS with Google WiFi. There’s also no VPN (you’d have to get a separate piece of hardware to support VPN.)

The bottom line

The Google WiFi router-replacement system is excellent. We love it. It fixed our quality of service issues – no more Spotify cutting out, no more lost printer jobs – and brought WiFi to the far end of our house. Setup is a breeze and the WiFi points take up very little space. Best of all, we’ll never fiddle with router antennas again.

Unlike the first bed, though, this time our bed is king size, with a memory foam topper and a new style of bed frame (this time with a headboard). After two months of sleeping on it, we are happy to recommend this awesome bed. Here’s the bed everyone in my family wants to lay on and never get off of.

All told, we spent just under $800 on this bed, which includes everything you see below (bed frame, mattress, plush topper, memory foam, and waterproof mattress protector).

Here’s what it looks like with no covers – everything fits perfectly right up to the edge of the mattress. There are no gaps or misaligned layers. In 2 months, nothing has shifted.

About us

We’re both 5’8″, but I’m a squishy female with wider hips (I weigh about 185 lbs) and my partner is a lean male (he’s about 150 lbs). I prefer a soft bed, he prefers a firmer bed.

My most common complaint about beds is that I “bottom out” – my butt and/or hip bones dig into the mattress past whatever cushioning layer is present. I also dislike mattresses typically described as “firm”.

How the bed feels

I think we’ve managed to find the perfect bed: it’s soft and luxurious on top, but it’s still supportive. I love laying on it. This stuff is subjective but I’ll try to explain why I think this bed is so awesome, starting with the base and working our way up.

Zinus platform bed review

Aside from general sturdiness, our requirements for a bed frame were that it include a headboard and that it be a platform design (so that we didn’t need to buy a box spring). Prices on frames/headboards are all over the place, but we quickly ruled out the $800-$2000 bedframes/headboards at our local furniture based on price alone.

The Amazon search results for bed frames and platform beds were dominated by a company called Zinus. I didn’t like how squat and short the headboard was but I was unable to find a suitable taller headboard at our price point so we accepted its squatness and ordered it.

It arrives with all the parts packed inside the headboard itself. Simply unpack, follow the instructions, and the assembly process is about 30 minutes start to finish.

Here is our Zinus bedframe assembled. It is sturdy and it looks good.

I do wish the headboard was a couple inches taller but oh well, it wasn’t a dealbreaker and everything else about the Zinus bedframe is great.

When I was researching bed frames/headboards I initially did not like the Zinus bed frame because the headboard is so short. I found it hard to verify the height, and I wondered if my pillows would be fully contained within its height. As it turned out, there is about 15″ worth of height between my mattress (10″ mattress, 3″ pillow topper, 2″ memory foam layer) and the top of the headboard. My pillows are contained by it.

The sleeping surface of the mattress/topper/memory foam ends up about 25″ off the floor.

Support is an important thing to get right, as we discovered with our previous bed. We had our queen mattress on a frame that supported the mattress with rows of springs. This frame was fine for us until I got pregnant and gained 50 lbs. My weight approached 220 lbs near the end of my pregnancy, and at 220 lbs, I could feel the mattress and frame sagging too far down. We put the mattress on the floor and the problem was gone, which suggested to me that the frame wasn’t actually supporting us that well.

We had a hard time deciding on a bed frame so we ordered the mattress first and used it on the floor in the meantime. It felt quite good there, and it felt just as good once it was put on the Zinus’s slats.

10″ king size Signature Sleep Contour mattress review

The first thing to know about ordering a mattress online is it’ll probably arrived rolled up, vacuum packed in a box. That’s how the Signature Sleep arrives at your front door. Oh, and the box is heavy.

The box is made of a very thick cardboard and was quite difficult to cut open and remove. On a scale of 1-5, 1 being a wet paper bag and 5 being Dwarven mithril, this box is a 10.

We knew from previous experience that once you cut the vacuum seal, the mattress is going to literally explode out of the packaging (or try to, anyway).This mattress enters the world with a BOOM.

We cut the packaging, which caused the mattress to instantly triple in size while still partially contained in the wrapping. Cue panicked rush to get all the plastic off so the mattress can take a more traditional mattress shape.

The mattress looks pretty bad at this point, uneven, curving toward the ceiling, lumpy. At this point, the mattress should be left undisturbed for 48 hours so it can slowly take its final form.

48 hours later, the mattress was puffy and laying flat on the floor.

There’s no denying it: this is a very low-priced mattress. Anyone feeling skeptical that this mattress feels good is right to feel that way.

When I got my first Signature Sleep Contour 2 years ago for our weekend place, I went into the whole experience with low expectations, but I was totally blown away. I came to prefer this inexpensive mattress over my apartment’s $1200 name-brand mattress.

Best of all: it’s surprisingly comfortable all by itself. I would describe it as a firm mattress, but that’s okay – we loaded it up with a pillow topper and a memory foam layer because we like our beds soft.

One thing that’s great about this particular mattress: you can flip it! We like to flip and rotate our mattress every 4-6 months (ish) to help prevent butt dents from forming.

3″ Lucid plush topper review

Manufacturer’s photo of the Lucid bed topper. It is plush and snuggly.

This is my third Lucid plush topper – I buy them for every bed I sleep on regularly. It’s like the pillow-top layer that mattress manufacturers sometimes add to beds, except you can remove it, fluff it, flip the mattress, wash it, etc.

My previous bed had this exact mattress topper on it for 2 years (in queen size) and I didn’t notice any flattening, which was a concern when I first bought it. I figured it would be a pancake in a month, but – impressively – it kept its thickness.

It doesn’t shift around, thanks to the elastic corner straps and its general weightiness.

It has no smell and never developed any bunching or unevenness, even after a trip through the washer. (I still have my queen-size Lucid topper – I use it to make our IKEA sofabed more comfortable for guests to sleep on).

Alveo Gel Memory Foam Mattress Topper review

The Alveo memory foam topper features little “gel” dots to help keep it cool.

Memory foam is a polarizing thing, apparently. If you read the reviews on any memory foam topper or bed you’ll see people who hate it and people who love it. I wanted to try memory foam because so many of my friends recommended it, but no one could recommend a particular brand or manufacturer so I was on my own for that part.

Amazon has dozens of memory foam toppers on offer, but I went with Alveo because it was relatively lower priced and had no negative reviews at the time I bought it. Some common complaints about other memory foam toppers were complaints about crumbliness and odor.

My Alveo topper arrived in a somewhat smallish box, considering it is a king size topper:

Box was smaller than I expected (baby for scale).

Out it comes! Overall, it was very easy to open up and unpack. It weighs 23 lbs.

I didn’t know how fragile it would be, so I wanted it mostly “in place” before I broke the vacuum seal.

I broke the plastic seal, removed the packing, and let the Alveo topper fluff up. I didn’t lay on it for 2 days. The creases and dents you see here went completely away within the first day of “fluff up” time.

I think it has a pleasing “give” to it – when I’m laying in bed, I like to press my hands and feet into it just to feel its satisfying squish. It had only the faintest odor when it came out of its packaging, and no noticeable odor once the mattress protector and sheets were over it.

Some of the memory foam detractors complain of it “sleeping hot”, but I haven’t noticed any temperature problems. We got ours in September, during the last heatwave of the summer, and we both slept fine on it. (For whatever it’s worth, I think I tend to “run cold”.)

Memory foam is sold in layers of 2″ thick, 3″ thick, and sometimes 4″ thick. I had no good metric for which thickness to go with so I picked the cheapest option (2″) and I think that was a fine choice.

As it turns out, the memory foam is pretty tough and survived being moved to the master bedroom just fine. We didn’t drag it, we gently rolled/folded it up a bit and then carried it. It held up perfectly at the corners. Under normal use, it is the top layer and held in place by its own weight and by our SafeRest waterproof mattress protector.

Should the plush topper go on top or should the memory foam layer go on top? Surprisingly, I couldn’t find many people talking about this online, so we tried it both ways. We strongly preferred the memory foam layer on top. With the plush topper on top, the memory foam’s effect felt diffused, and the plush topper felt poorly supported.

SafeRest waterproof mattress protector review

We put the SafeRest mattress protector over everything else (and under the sheets).

This is my go-to mattress protector. I prefer it over other designs that are made of thicker/noisy plastic (this one feels like cloth with a thin waterproof membrane backing) and I like that it fits like a fitted sheet. It’s deep enough to fit over the 10″ mattress, 3″ plush topper, and 2″ memory foam without being too tight or too loose.

On my bed, the protector goes over everything but the sheets. The sheets go directly on top of the protector. Since it fits like a fitted sheet, the mattress is not fully encased in the protector (it’s “open” on the bottom side) but it also means I can easily remove the protector to wash it.

Why buy a bed online?

We started looking for a bed online because, basically, mattress stores are no fun.

We visited a couple stores before buying our Signature Sleep mattress from Amazon. We were actually hoping to lay down on a Casper or a Purple, but neither of those online mattress sellers had in-store models to try, and most of the “brand name” mattresses were outside our price range. The one mattress model we did like enough to consider buying from the store was discontinued, and the salespeople were overly pushy in trying to steer us toward a model that was nothing like it.

Buying a mattress online is great for reasons other than getting to skip the mattress store, too.

For one, you get the mattress in a portable box. If you’re getting the mattress delivered to one location before you have to move it somewhere else (such as a dorm, your new apartment that you don’t have keys to yet, your weekend place in the woods), it arrives in a (somewhat) portable rectangular box that may fit into your car (our queen size Signature Sleep fit into our Subaru Forester).

Our particular mattress is great because it’s just a bare-bones, quality mattress that you can customize to your liking with toppers. You can add as many bells and whistles as you want to (or none at all). Most, if not all, of the mattresses we found in physical stores were deluxe models with all the trimmings. There was no “basic” mattress, just expensive ones with lots of extras.

Generally speaking, the mattresses you find online are cheaper than the in-store models. Presumably there is less overhead involved with selling mattresses online (I imagine any markup is going into marketing right now). Even the “name brand” online mattresses are two-thirds to half the cost of the mattresses we found at our local mattress stores.

And, if you aren’t sure you know what you want – this “mix and match” approach to building a bed makes it easy to try different things. We weren’t sure if we were going to like sleeping on memory foam, but we figured we could send the topper back if we didn’t like it (rather than have it be a permanent, built-in part of our mattress like mattress store models).

The only major downside to buying online is it’s difficult to return a mattress purchased online. Since the mattress arrives rolled up and vacuum sealed, there’s no way for you to get it back in the box. You’d have contact Amazon or the manufacturer of the mattress for help with a return. (Some of the other online mattress retailers have their own promises regarding returns – it depends who you buy the mattress from.)

We were tempted to try one of them, but we couldn’t figure out which one to place our bet on. Negative reviews seemed to complain of them being overly firm. Finally, after literally hours of watching reviews on YouTube and reading reviews on Amazon and blogs, we came to three conclusions:

they were all probably too firm

they all cost more money than we wanted to spend

they are all heavy (100+ lbs)

We were done with our bed by the time this article came out, but it confirmed another thing we were starting to suspect: some of the reviews we had been reading were not exactly “unbiased”.

The bottom line

We love our “internet bed” – and we recommend this way of buying and assembling a mattress to everyone who asks. It’s cost-effective and you can easily mix and match parts to build your dream bed in a way you can’t at a mattress store.

Here’s what we used to build our new bed, frame included, for well under $1000:

We compare the pricey Nest Cam with paywall features to the inexpensive Yi camera that comes with everything included

Our Yi Dome Camera 1080p HD rating: 5/5

Yi camera: loads of bang for your buck

It all started when Mr. Homeupgraded’s brother got a Yi camera for watching his betta fish.

At the time, we had a Nest Cam pointed into our daughter’s crib for stealthy baby spying. But, after being on the receiving end of a bunch of high quality fish videos and snapshots, we realized that a Yi camera, which retails for about 1/3rd the price of a single Nest Cam, would make a much better baby monitor than Nest Cam.

Since we’re not rich (see: baby), we don’t shell out $10/month for Nest Aware, which is the only way to review footage from earlier or save clips from your Nest Cam.

However, Yi lets you do all that and more – for just the cost of the camera. It saves clips to an optional SD card (which you buy separately) so you can review clips and pick which ones you want to save to your phone. You can also share the stream, and it’s easy to take snapshots with a single button touch – all features that the Nest Cam either doesn’t have, or locks up behind Nest’s $10/month Nest Aware subscription. (Yi offers a cloud service, too, if you want off-site backup and more footage than you can fit onto the SD card.)

Basically, the fish had a better camera than our baby. There was only one thing left to do: we bought a Yi Dome Camera and put it to the test as our new baby spy cam.

TL;DR: The Yi camera put Nest to shame. I think I’m going to eBay my collection of Nest Cams and start over with Yi.

Yi Dome Camera at a glance

Complete 360° coverage – 112° wide-angle lens, 345° horizontal & 115° vertical rotation range for that you can navigate manually (through the app) or set up to automatically scan the room – you can also get a Yi camera that doesn’t rotate or pan but the price is the same

High quality night vision (up to 3 meters in pitch dark) thanks to 8 built-in 940nm infrared LED beads, with no LED glare (some cameras have a brighter red ring of LEDs for night vision)

Crying baby sensor sends a “Crying baby” alert to your phone

2-way audio sounds about as good as being on speakerphone

Optional SD card storage – supports up to 32GB card (here’s ours) so you can save videos to the camera

Nest app vs. Yi app

On the left, you’ll see our Nest Cam app offers very little beyond viewing a live stream of footage. If you pay Nest’s $10/month subscription fee, you’d get little thumbnails representing stored video clips. If you don’t pay their fee, you get half a screen of wasted space and no way to look back in time.

On the right is the Yi Home app, with buttons for useful actions. You can toggle audio muting, record video from the live stream, turn the microphone on/off, take a snapshot that gets saved directly to your phone’s photos, and switch to full-screen mode. There’s the timeline you can navigate to see recent events, and those same events are saved in a list elsewhere in the app. You can adjust whether the camera streams in high definition or standard, and even view its transfer speed with your WiFi.

Here’s a little guide I made for the Yi control menu in the center of the screen. There are even more options, but these are the ones I use most of the time when checking on my baby.

Look at all the things Yi can do!

Yi gives you “premium” features for the cost of the camera – no monthly fee

These features are all available for free on a Yi camera.

There is no free Nest equivalent. Seriously, none – if you want to grab a pic of what you’re looking at through your Nest Cam, you have to take a screenshot with your phone. (And you probably have to turn on device rotation and actually turn your phone 90 degrees if you want the screenshot to be full-screen.)

If you want to see what happened an hour ago, you’re out of luck – unless you’re a Nest Aware subscriber. If you want to save video as something is happening live in front of your camera, there’s no way to do it – unless you’re a subscriber.

More things to love about Yi camera

There’s a full-screen mode in the Yi app and it’s accessed via button in the Yi app. You don’t have to turn off the portrait orientation lock on your phone itself. This makes it very fast to get into full-screen mode and take advantage of every inch of your phone’s screen.

Event timeline or continuous recording

The timeline of events makes it easy to review recent clips by dragging your finger around in the timeline. These events are also saved to the Alerts tab of the app, where you can review and download clips.

Alternatively, you can set the camera to constantly record. It records in a loop and automatically overwrites old footage to record new footage. I’m not sure yet how much footage it holds – I turned on continuous recording 5 days ago and it still hasn’t started overwriting old footage. With a 32GB SD card, it holds at least 5 days worth of footage.

My Yi camera is set to continuously record, which lets me scrub around the timeline to review the past 5+ days worth of footage.

Save clips is easy

If you’re reviewing footage and you see your kid doing something cute, it’s easy to drag the timeline to where you want the clip to begin and record off the recorded footage. The clip gets saved to your phone.

Compare this to Nest Cams, which are really only for live streaming unless you cough up a monthly $10 fee per camera for their cloud backup storage. It’d be nice if Nest would let me back up to an SD card or my local network storage, but no, it has to be their expensive cloud solution or nothing at all. :\

Yi cameras also offer live video recording. If you see something interesting happening, you can tap a button and start recording instantly. This video is saved to the camera’s SD card and your immediately downloaded to your phone.

Share your stream

It’s easy to share your camera’s stream with family or friends. Just have them create a Yi account and then invite them via email. (You can also revoke access just as easily.)

Alert log and crying baby alert

Crying Baby alert. It lags behind the actual cry by about a minute, but so far it has correctly identified cries (and only occasionally mistaken other noises for cries).

The notification comes with an awkwardly formatted timestamp. This cry happened at 12:24pm.

If you want to review all the recent crying baby alerts, they get saved into the Activity Alerts tab for quick review.

A variety of cloud backup options. If you need the extra peace of mind granted by uploading your footage to a cloud, then Yi’s cloud service has several options to pick from.

The most intriguing option is the uploading mode, where you can select to upload only motion detected videos for up to five devices or you can upload a 24/7 stream from one camera. If you have five Yi cameras, that’s a screaming deal compared to what it would cost to have Nest Aware on five Nest Cams. You also get the first month of Yi cloud for free.

Yi’s subscription plans are available in the app itself:

We don’t have the subscription, since we only use the camera to see if the baby’s awake or just making sounds in her sleep. We like to review footage from the past night, but we don’t have much need to monitor her crib 24/7 or make backups of her sleeping.

Yi vs. Nest hardware

Both our Nest Cams and our Yi camera are 1080p. The image quality is great in both daylight and nighttime.

There is, however, one very noticeable difference between the two cameras: the Nest has a ring of red LEDs around its lens when it’s in night vision mode, but the Yi camera does not have these red LEDs.

This is fantastic because our baby would stare at the Nest Cam in the dark, probably because the red ring catches her attention. We haven’t found her staring at the Yi camera in the dark. Whatever Yi did to avoid the red ring of LEDs in the dark, I’m glad they did it.

Also, you can even disable the Yi’s little blue “on” light (through the app) to make the camera completely invisible in the dark.

Things we don’t love

The Yi camera is awesome enough to reward it 5 stars, but there are just a couple things we hope they improve:

The camera can’t look “down” enough to see into a crib without some assistance. Even though the camera has a huge range of motion, it couldn’t look “down” enough to see into a crib that it’s about 2 feet away from. We had to slide something under our camera to get a good view of Peach’s crib. We will probably mount the camera on the wall, eventually, but for now… it’s gotta live on the dresser…with a book halfway under it.

The camera snapshot shown on the app’s main page is stale. It might be hours out of date when you open the app. (It seems to display whatever you were last looking at, or where you left the timeline.)

You have to tap the preview to get an updated image. I suspect this stale image problem is a bug that might get fixed in the future.

The bottom line

It’s like getting all the stuff Nest charges you a monthly fee for, for free – and that’s after you buy a camera that’s 1/3rd the price of a Nest Cam. Even if you need a cloud backup, Yi’s plans are more reasonably priced, especially for multiple devices.

Best of all, we think it’s a fantastic baby monitor. The image quality is excellent – even in the dark and through her crib slats, we can tell which way she’s facing, if she’s still got her pacifier in, and listen for her breathing on the microphone. The cry alerts are useful, too.

If you need a great baby or home surveillance camera, get a Yi camera and a 32GB SD card. You won’t regret it.

I blame summer for my box fan addiction. My parents started it – rather than run the air conditioning, they’d stick a box fan in my bedroom window. The first night with the fan was noisy, but then I’d get used to it. Come September I’d turn the fan off and be instantly reminded of all the noise around me: cars starting, lawns getting mowed at 7am, the TV in the living room below me, someone snoring in the other bedroom. I started running the fan year-round. (The Lasko Wind Machine was my fan of choice for many years.)

A year ago, I finally decided to get civilized retire my box fan and invest in a white noise machine. No more big fan eating up precious space in my bedroom, no more blades to clean, no more clickety-click sound after a couple years, and – best of all – I could take the machine with me when I traveled.

I’ve now got three white noise machines: a HoMedics Sound Spa (my first white noise machine), a Lectro Fan, and a Lectro Fan Jr. How do they stack up? Which white noise machine is best? Read on to find out!

Why use a noise machine?

During the week, we live in a city apartment. Our friends and family from suburbia are always like, isn’t it loud there? We don’t live over a nightclub or anything ridiculous, but there is a hotel across the street, and that street is a flat stretch of road that attracts loud cars with loud stereos. There’s a construction site adjacent to my building that fires up at 7:30 on the dot six days a week, and a whole lot of random neighbor noises.

But… it’s easy to forget all of that when my white noise machines are running.

Most people probably discover white noise machines while searching for help with insomnia or sleep quality, but they’re useful all day long. It might seem counter-intuitive that adding sound makes it easier to relax and sleep when all you want is some peace and quiet, but the brain is quick to adapt to the steady whooooosh.

It covers up intermittent sounds. Neighbors starting cars, snoring from the other room, electric heater cycling on/off, people in the unit above you stomping around – these things get lost in the white noise.

Better sleep. I definitely sleep deeper and wake fewer times with mine running (it also works on babies).

No fan blades to clean! Or I suppose you could just never clean them, and live with the knowledge that your dirty fan blades are disgusting. Or you could buy a new fan every so often, but those costs add up.

It’s compact and portable, so you can bring your whooosh with you and enjoy the same sound in every hotel bed and guest room you travel to.

Get some daytime peace and quiet. Even if you aren’t sleeping, a white noise machine is good at covering up conversations, TVs, music, etc. coming from nearby areas or adjacent rooms so you can work, read, or have a semi-private conversation with someone near you. My baby is napping on the other side of the room as I write this, unbothered by my quiet conversation and typing.

There are virtually no drawbacks. The only times I turn my white noise machine off are to watch TV in the same room, have ordinary-volume conversations, or for the benefit of my father, who has enough trouble hearing even without the white noise.

Overall best white noise machine: LectroFan Jr.

4.5 / 5 stars

The LectroFan Jr. is my favorite white noise machine. If you’re not sure which one to get, get this one. It’s the jack of all trades white noise machine, reasonably priced, and durable.

A fantastic white noise machine in a compact package.

It makes a pleasing white noise, gets more than loud enough, offers a variety of “whooshing” sound options, and can be found at a surprisingly reasonable price. It’s also small – a bit larger than the palm of my hand – so it travels well.

But wait! Isn’t this the “junior” version? What do you miss out on if you go with this model instead of the full version – the one simply called “LectroFan”?

LectroFan Jr. vs. LectroFan

Bizarrely, there’s a lot of misinformation about the LectroFan Jr. vs. the LectroFan out there on the interwebs and Amazon reviews. (I’m guessing most people don’t own both and are speculating as to what the differences are.)

So let’s set a few things straight:

neither one plays “ocean” or “nature” sounds

neither one has a battery

neither one offers a headphone jack

(If you do want these features, check out the LectroFan Micro which has a battery, ocean sound, and doubles as a Bluetooth speaker. If you want lots of nature sounds and a headphone jack, check out the Sound+Sleep.)

The LectroFan Jr and LectroFan have exactly the same body design and number of buttons.

They weigh the same, feel the same, smell the same, taste the same – and do pretty much the same thing except the LectroFan Jr. has 18 lullaby songs plus 12 fan / white noise sounds and the LectroFan has 20 fan / white noise sounds to pick from. Playing the lullabies is completely optional.

On the Jr. model, the horizontal button does lullaby songs (left) and white noise + fan sounds (right). On the LectroFan, the horizontal button does fans (left) and white noises (right).

LectroFan Jr. lullaby demo

LectroFan Jr. comes with 18 songs and you can set it to play all the songs in shuffled order or play one song on repeat. Here’s a 1-minute video previewing some of the LectroFan’s 18 lullabies (as best my iPhone can capture them).

If you leave it playing lullabies, it will play them in random order and then shuffle them once it’s played them all. You can use the 60 min timer with them (press the 60 min timer multiple times to “stack” the timers, creating a 2-, 3-, 4-, etc. hour-long timer). The machine remembers what lullaby you left it on, even after you turn it off and back on. Note that you can’t play lullabies and white noise at the same time from the same machine.

For whatever it’s worth, my 3 month old baby doesn’t particularly care for the lullabies (or lullabies in general), so I don’t know if the songs are that big a selling point.

But that’s okay – the songs are kind of a side dish to the meat function of this white noise machine, which is the fan and white noise sounds.

LectroFan Jr. fan and white noise sound demo

The LectroFan Jr. puts “fans” and “white noises” on the same button. That’s fine – most people can’t tell a “fan” from a “white noise” anyway, and it’s not some huge loss that you have to step through fans to get to white noises. The machine remembers what you left it on, even if you turn it off and unplug it, so it’s pretty much “set it and forget it” once you pick a favorite.

The first couple “fan noises” sound great to me and I just leave it on one of them all the time (maybe I’m just not much of a noise connoisseur). Some of the higher pitched fan noises are kind of annoying, to be honest. But with 12 to pick from, I’m sure there’s one for everyone.

The LectroFan (full model), by comparison, has 10 white noises and 10 fan sounds to pick from. But do you really need 8 extra? They’re even the same sounds across both models – it’s not like the Jr model got the recording of the squeaky fan and the full model got the good fan.

LectroFan Jr. color options

Here’s a fun extra: the Jr. comes in three color options. You can get it with a white, pink, or blue speaker grille (it’s hard plastic, not cloth).

They also make one that’s black with grey buttons, but only for the full model: here’s the LectroFan in black.

I bought all of mine in white because I’m boring.

LectroFan Jr. / LectroFan USB power adapter

Both the Jr. and not-Jr. have the exact same USB / AC adapter plug. You can power the white noise machine via USB (ie: plug it into your computer or laptop and it pulls power from there – seems useful for travel, maybe) or plug that USB plug into the AC adapter and power it from a wall outlet.

Here’s the other end of the power cord. Note that it’s removable, suggesting that you could replace the cord without replacing the entire unit, if needed.

To recap:

LectroFan Jr. Pros

Cheaper than the LectroFan with no real drawbacks

18 lullabies

3 colors: white, pink, blue

Compact design and it travels well

You can stack the 60 min timers to make a 1-, 2-, 3-, etc. hour timer

It remembers your sound choices when you turn it off and back on

No LEDs to cover up or be annoyed by

No discernible loop

LectroFan Jr. Cons

Can’t play lullabies and white noise at the same time

A couple of the higher-pitched white noise options are unpleasant to the point that I wonder why they even exist

LectroFan (full version)

4/ 5 stars

More sounds, no lullabies: the original LectroFan offers more sounds but is it worth the higher price?

Just like a Jr. but without the lullabies and 8 more noise options.

The LectroFan (full version) is pricier than the Jr. with 4 more “fan sounds” and 4 more “white noises”. As a slight convenience, the sideways button in the middle separates the “fans” (on left) from the “whites” (on right). Still, I’d argue that once you’ve found your favorite whoooooosh, you won’t be toggling it much (if ever).

The only reason to get the full version LectroFan is if you’re convinced you need 20 sounds to pick from instead of 12.

That’s not to say I don’t like it. The LectroFan is fantastic machine and I use mine every single night and often leave it running for days, so maybe I’m just cheesed that I found the LectroFan before I found the Jr.

When I bought my first one, I incorrectly assumed the Jr. wouldn’t be nearly as good a machine, but the Jr. model really does everything I need (generate white noise) at a significantly lower price.

LectroFan white noise machine demo

Watch me click through the various fan sounds and white noise options on the LectroFan!

LectroFan Cons

Nothing special about it vs. the Jr. model

HoMedics Sound Spa Relaxation Machine

3 / 5 stars

It’s inexpensive, I’ll give it that.

The HoMedics Sound Spa was my very first white noise machine. It’s cheap (you can usually find it for under $25) but its cheap construction is readily apparent, especially once you’ve traveled with it a bit and it starts to wear out. The volume knob is fiddly – it works, but sometimes it defaults to REALLY LOUD until you spin it around, which seems to reset it.

“Rain” and “white noise” are my favorite settings on this machine, and I used them for months until one night I was laying awake and realized I could hear the rain sound looping. It’s a short loop, like 3 seconds long, which is ridiculous – and I can’t unhear the loop. Picking up on the repetitive sounds kind of ruined the machine for me but my infant daughter doesn’t seem to be bothered by it, so sometimes I use it for her.

The HoMedics Sound Spa is kind of junky and I don’t recommend it when you can get a sweet LectroFan Jr. for not much more.

But, if you really want a cheap rainstorm generator, this is the machine for you. After all, it took me a long time to identify the loop, and people I’ve pointed it out to don’t really pick up on the loop so maybe it’s not as apparent as I think it is. The white noise option is good, too, and doesn’t have as easily a discernible loop.

Here’s a demo of its various sounds, as best my iPhone can capture them (they sound better in person):

HoMedics Sound Spa Pros

Probably the cheapest sound machine on the market

5 realistic soundscapes (thunder, ocean, brook, etc) are great until you find the loop

Three timer options

HoMedics Sound Spa Cons

The sound loops are literally three seconds long and if you’re laying awake long enough, you can pick up on the loop pretty easily

Flimsy volume knob

Even on its lowest volume, it can be too loud – we sometimes throw a shirt over its speaker

Bright green LED has to be covered if you’re bothered by lights in the dark

More white noise machine options

There’s more than just LectroFans and Sound Spas out there. Here’s a quick rundown of some other white noise machines.

Marpac Dohm-DS All Natural Sound Machine

Marpac has a 50+ year history in sound machines

Unlike many sound machines (including the LectroFans), the Marpac Dohm-DS sound machine is mechanical. There’s an actual spinning fan inside and you canadjust its volume and pitch by turning the chassis. (And even though it’s a fan, it doesn’t generate a breeze. Such witchcraft.)

Marpac, the company behind it, has been making sound machines for over 50 years and this particular machine was chosen as the Official Sound Conditioner by the National Sleep Foundation.

Reviewers from around the web compare its sound to that of a bathroom fan or a computer tower fan. I don’t own this machine so I can’t comment on its sound myself, but here’s a video review that demos what it sounds like running:

The most common complaints I see about the Marpac Dohm-DS are about mechanical failure (the fan starts clicking or stops running altogether) and about the volume (hard to be more specific, though – one person’s jet engine is another’s too-quiet hum).

I debated this machine vs. the LectroFan for a while and ultimately went with the LectroFan because I’m somewhat susceptible to hearing the “mechanics” (clicking, whirring) of mechanical things and prefer an electronically generated sound.

Marpac Dohm-DS Cons

Mechanical fan can develop clicks or whines more readily than an electronic sound

Adaptive Sound Technologies – Sound+Sleep Sleep Therapy System

I don’t have one of these, but I wish I did! This is one deluxe noise machine.

The Sound+Sleep machine is made by ASTI, the same Silicon Valley-based startup that makes LectroFan. The big difference (aside from price) is the variety of “sound stories”, such as “meadow” or “ocean”. With this little machine, you can fall asleep to the sound of rain instead of just a white noise whoooosh.

If you want more than white noise, check out the Sound+Sleep’s 10 soundscapes

Adjustable richness adds layers, variety

Like LectroFan, this machine can be used to play white noise. However, the Sound+Sleep also plays a variety of “sound stories” such as ocean, meadow, rainfall, and more. Some are a little odd, like the train option. (I grew up near a train station and I can’t imagine who would want to listen to trains at night, but there you go.) You can hear samples here on Sound+Sleep’s website (with some dude yapping over them).

This chart from the manufacturer explains it:

Click to enlarge

Adaptive feature adjusts to your environment

The Sound+Sleep’s Adaptive feature uses the unit’s built-in microphone to listen to your environment and dynamically adjust the volume based on how noisy it perceives your environment to be. (Note that this isn’t like the technology inside noise-canceling headphones, it’s not working to “cancel out” audio from your environment, it’s just adjusting the volume to suit the environment you’re using it in.) You can toggle this feature on or off.

White noise machine with a headphone jack

Everyone’s asking for it – this machine’s got it. You can also use an aux cable to hook the Sound+Sleep up to the “line in” on an external audio system. This might be useful if you’ve got a sweet multi-speaker setup or just want to pipe the sound to both sides of your bed.

4 white noise options

For white noise, use the three richness settings of the “white noise” sound story and the lowest setting of the waterfall sound story.

Sound+Sleep Pros

10 unique “sound stories”

Richness feature adds optional additional sounds to the “stories”, such as seagulls to the ocean

No detectible looping – the soundscapes are 30+ mins long and “evolve”

Battery-powered white noise machine lasts through the night

Playing its own sounds, the battery lasts about 16 hours. Streaming music or sounds over Bluetooth, the battery lasts about 6 hours. (Or you can just keep it plugged in via its USB charge cord and run it indefinitely.)

Smallest white noise machine

It’s ridiculously tiny – like, I think makeup comes in bigger containers. Reviewers say it has a lot of oomph despite its small size, and the manufacturer says it gets just as loud as the full LectroFan models. I’ve never seen a smaller white noise machine.

Another interesting feature: the speaker can twist up and point anywhere you want.

You can angle the speaker!

LectroFan Micro vs. LectroFan Jr.

They’re similarly priced, so why not get the Micro instead of the Jr.?

Well, they’re not similarly priced once you account for the possibility of having to buy a longer USB charge cable and USB/AC adapter so you can run it overnight. I don’t like to fiddle with battery charging except for when I travel, so I’d want to just leave it plugged in 24/7.

The Micro adds Bluetooth speaker capabilities, but your mileage will vary on how useful that is to you. Personally, I already have a few Bluetooth speakers, so for me the Bluetooth functionality is not a huge selling point for day-to-day use. For travel, there’s some appeal in having a combo white noise machine / Bluetooth device, but I only travel a couple times a year and it’s not a big deal to go without a speaker. For home use, I’ve come to prefer WiFi enabled speakers over Bluetooth because I don’t like my phone’s audio capabilities being tied up the way they are when paired to Bluetooth.

The LectroFan Jr.’s buttons are simpler, easier to understand than the Micro’s. On the Micro, all the buttons serve multiple functions and they’re very small with tiny non-text labels. On the Jr., they’re plainly labeled and every button does just one thing. This sort of usability and accessibility is more important to some users than others, of course, but I think the Jr. comes out ahead in terms of how easy it is to operate the device.

The Micro does have something else the Jr. does not: an ocean sound!

LectroFan Micro Pros

10 built-in sounds: 5 fans, 4 white noises, 1 ocean

Seriously tiny

Battery powered for extra portability

Angle the speaker out towards you

Just as loud as full-size LectroFan models

LectroFan Micro Cons

No USB to AC wall adapter included, so you’ll have to use one you already have or buy one

Comes with a short USB cable – to keep it plugged in 24/7, you might have to get a longer one

No headphone jack, so you must use it with the speaker attached to it

The bottom line

If you’re not sure which white noise machine to get, go with the LectroFan Jr. It’s got “set it and forget it” simplicity and a sturdy, easy-to-use design.

If you’d rather fall asleep to the sound of ocean waves, skip the cheap HoMedics and go straight for the Sound+Sleep machine.

It’s HOT here in Seattle, but our Keystone KSTAP14B portable AC unit arrived just in time for yet another 90 degree day.

It’s about the size of a mini fridge and it vents hot air out your nearest window while expelling cold air into the room. Depending on your room size, it maintains anywhere from -6 degrees to -15 degrees difference from the ambient temperature of your home. How fast it does it also depends on the room size, but you should feel a difference within 10 minutes in a bedroom-size room and in about 25 mins in a bigger room.

Pros

There’s a lot to love with the Keystone portable AC:

It’s portable! Or at least, relatively easy to move around compared with other styles of air conditioners thanks to its wheels and upright design. (However, at ~80 lbs, it is not a travel air conditioner.)

Cools a bedroom fast and effectively

About as loud as a box fan on high, and the noise is smooth and consistent so I found it easy to sleep in the same room

It has a remote! And that remote has all the same buttons as the AC unit itself

Caster wheels for easy re-positioning

Flexible exhaust tube is generously long, ~6 feet total

Runs on normal 115V outlet (just be careful not to run too many other things on the same circuit, it does take most of the circuit’s power)

No water pan to empty (on AC mode and fan mode; dehumidifier mode requires some emptying)

No protrusion from the window, so it looks nice from the outside

Washable mesh filter

Programmable 24-hour on/off timer so you can set it up to cool your place before you get home

Move it from room to room in under 10 minutes, like you might a box fan, since you have to redo the window kit. We moved it from our living room to our bedroom at nighttime, though, and we had the whole thing up and running again in about 8 minutes.

Here’s a video showing how it doesn’t “cycle” or rattle or sound annoying like a lot of in-wall AC units do.

Cons

Heavy! But this is true of any portable AC unit

Included window kit only works with windows that slide sideways or up and down

Exhaust hose is very warm, countering some of the cooling effect. I wish it came with better insulation (supposedly you can get an insulated sleeve for it)

At 48″, the included window kit isn’t quite tall enough for our windows (we solved this with a piece of cardboard)

Adjusting the temp makes it beep, which might not be ideal in the middle of the night

Here’s a video I made of how the beeping sounds when you change the temp or mode:

Where it really shines

Bedrooms

Even though it’s been somewhere between 77-84 degrees in the rest of our apartment as we went to bed every night this week, the AC unit brought the bedroom temp down to 65 and kept it down there until the daylight heat returned.

It’s the difference between sleeping uncovered and uncomfortable vs. cozying up under an actual blanket and not feeling like the other person in the bed is trying to roast you with their body heat.

The AC unit is about as loud as a box fan running on high. If you can sleep through a hotel air conditioner, you can sleep through the Keystone. We are used to sleeping with white noise and box fans, so this wasn’t a big deal for us, but people used to sleeping in silence may find it loud. It’s a consistent loud, though – it doesn’t cycle or stutter like hotel air conditioners and some window air conditioners. It just runs steady, and that makes all the difference in terms of this AC unit’s “sleepability”, in my opinion.

Apartments

This AC is basically designed for small spaces. It did pretty well in our 500 sq. foot living room/kitchen (we live in a 1 bedroom apartment now), though not as well as it does in the bedroom. We’ll tolerate a warm living room as long as there’s a nice, cool bedroom waiting for us at bedtime, so putting the AC in the bedroom made more sense for us.

Is it worth it for a Seattle apartment? We think so. I don’t know who convinced Seattle builders that we don’t need air conditioning in our homes here, but July – September can be brutal (and 2016 was one such year). We see lots of window ACs and exhaust tubes in windows around our neighborhood, so it’s not just us being wusses about the heat.

That room that never gets cool enough even though you have central air

Even in homes with central air, I could see this being useful for lofts or rooms that just never get cool enough. A lot of two-story homes struggle to get the 2nd floor bedrooms and living spaces cool enough in the hottest parts of summer. A portable air conditioner might save you having to move your mattress downstairs or staying out of that loft area you enjoy during the cooler months of the year.

Homes with strict community rules

Portable AC units are almost invisible from the outside. It doesn’t protrude from the window at all and its “in window” footprint is small. This should please your HOA, landlord, or busybody neighbors.

No DIY required

Just plug it in and go – no holes to drill, no insulation to stuff into cracks, no wiring. Much better than some of the alternatives out there…

Keystone portable AC unboxing

The Keystone portable AC unit arrives in a large, two-piece cardboard box with a plastic strap holding the halves together. With the plastic strap removed, you can easily separate the two halves of the box, but you shouldn’t separate them until you’ve got the AC unit inside your home or apartment.

Heads up: it’s heavy

It’s about 80 lbs and pretty big so plan on wheeling it into your place and having a helper for stairs unless you are a muscle god.

Not much assembly required!

The exhaust tube and collar parts are on the top and separated from the AC unit itself with a block of packing Styrofoam. I expected to have to put a lot more fiddly bits together, but this is about as pre-assembled as Keystone could’ve made it.

Lift them out and remove the Styrofoam here’s the AC unit itself. Fortunately, you don’t have to lift the AC unit out of the box or cut the box off from around it. The box is already in two parts, so all you do is lift the cardboard box up and the unit is left sitting on the other half of the box.

The AC unit is on casters, so it’s (relatively) easy to wheel it into place once you’ve unboxed it.

Keystone AC on-unit controls

You can operate the Keystone AC with the remote or the on-unit controls. They’re pretty self explanatory, but some notable things here are Swing (which causes the lid to lift and lower so air isn’t just emitted straight out of the unit) and Sleep (which gradually shuts the unit off after 30 minutes).

Remote

The “Follow Me” feature is a nice touch that separates this Keystone portable AC from some of the similarly priced competition. When it’s on and the remote is pointed at the unit, the remote sends a temperature reading to the mothership AC unit every 3 minutes.

This is a nice little touch that helps you get the room to the temperature you actually want it, not the temperature the AC unit thinks it is from a reading taken at the unit itself.

Other than that, the great thing about this remote is it duplicates all of the same buttons that exist on the unit itself (because the last thing anyone wants to do in this heat is get up again).

Window kit appearance, dimensions

That plastic piece that holds the hose up to the window (the “window kit”) is, at minimum, 26.5″ tall. At maximum, with both pieces in position, it’s 48″ tall. You’ll need a window that slides horizontally or vertically to hold it in place. Our windows slide horizontally, so our kit is placed vertically.

Here’s what it looks like from the outside:

Cost to run

This AC unit uses about 1580 watts as it runs. At 10 cents a kilowatt hour (your utility costs may vary), that works out to about $3.80 day to run it for 24 hours a day, which you probably won’t.

It’s probably closer to $1/day with typical use. (So worth it)

How noisy is the Keystone portable AC unit?

As stated earlier in this review, it’s about as loud as a box fan running on high. However, it’s a consistent noise, a lot like a white noise machine might generate. It doesn’t cycle on/off like some AC units, beep, click, or anything annoying like that.

From the manufacturer:

55 dBA on high (close to a dishwasher or clothes dryer)

52 dBA on medium

49 dBA on low

Why we chose Keystone over competitors

Basically, it had the best BTU to cost ratio we could find.

The more BTUs, the more powerful the AC. Our budget was firmly “under $500”, so we wanted the most bang for our buck. The reviews on Amazon were great and we were dying in this heatwave, so we ordered it and we love it!

BTUs matter

Portable air conditioners vary in terms of BTU. Generally, the more BTUs, the more cooling power and the larger a room the AC unit is recommended for.

The Keystone KSTAP14B is rated at 14,000 BTUs, and the manufacturer states that this is suitable for a 700 sq. ft room. Meanwhile, this well-rated and less expensive EdgeStar model is rated at 12,000 BTUs, which doesn’t look like that much less until you see that the manufacturer only recommends it for a 425 sq. ft space. That’s a pretty big difference in the amount of space cooled, and it’s a pretty big difference in how effective two different AC units might be in the same room. We figured we were best off getting the most BTUs and beating back the heat with raw cooling power, and that strategy seems to have worked.

Keystone KSTAP14A vs. Keystone KSTAP14B

Shopping around a bit will reveal that there are two Keystone models with similar names. The only difference as far as we can tell is the body styling; the A looks straight out of the 80’s and the B has a sleeker body design. The rest is the same.

The bottom line

Summer 2016 in Seattle shall be remembered for its hot, record-breaking heat. I’m also 9 months pregnant as I write this, so this summer has already felt like trying to medal in the misery Olympics. I hadn’t had a decent night of sleep in over a month when the Keystone KSTAP14B portable air conditioner arrived and transformed our ability to sleep through the night. You can’t go wrong with this AC unit!

I got a new tablet! This review is specifically for Wacom’s latest Intuos model, the Wacom Intuos Pro.

How I use a Wacom tablet

I use my tablet almost exclusively for illustration and digital painting in Photoshop.

If you want to use an affordable, professional grade tablet to draw, color, or paint on your computer, this review is for you!

Wacom Intuos Pro (small size) features

Ambidextrous design – the buttons can be on the left or the right

Wired or wireless! Charge the battery during wired use, then go wireless

6 customizable hotkeys

1 big touch ring –slide to smoothly adjust brush size or zoom level

Small size is plenty big, fits in lap or on desk

Things it won’t do:

Teach you color theory, anatomy, lighting, etc

Put in the thousands of hours of practice it takes to be a decent artist

(Just throwing those last two out there, since a lot of people seem to think having a tablet automatically makes you a way better artist. Boy, I wish…)

My particular tablet is a “certified refurbished” model from Amazon, but it hasn’t got a scratch on it, smells brand new, and came packaged in all the plastic wrap and twist ties you’d expect in a new tablet. I’m suspicious as to whether it’s actually seen any use at all.

Unboxing the Wacom Intuos Pro

Wacom Intuos Pro comes in a nice cardboard box with a plastic carrying handle. I doubt it’s intended to be like, a regular tote for the tablet, but it’s a nice touch that gives the product a more upscale presentation and keeps it safe during transit.

Below: the Wacom Intuos Pro in “small” size. I think the small size is plenty big, even though I’ve owned and used the “medium” size.

You can orient the tablet either way (buttons on left or right). If you remember the buttons-on-both-sides design of the Intuos 3, you’ll notice your hand now gets to rest on a smooth (not button) surface.

Unlike earlier Wacom models, the USB cord is now detachable.

Intuos small vs. medium size

If you’re debating a small Wacom vs. a medium Wacom, here’s my opinion: I think Wacom’s medium size tablet (the entire thing is 14.9″ x 9.9″) is unnecessarily big, and I think the largest Intuos Pro size is just crazy overkill huge.

Larger tablets require broader motions, which become tiring after hours and hours of drawing/painting

You can zoom into your digital canvas for more precision, you don’t need more physical real estate to get more precision

It’s the most affordable

Don’t believe anyone who tells you bigger size = more professional; I’ve worked as an artist and in offices with dozens of artists, and the vast majority happily used the small size Wacom (some had Cintiqs).

Sure, get a bigger size if you really want it and are confident it’s right for you, but I don’t think you’ll feel constricted by the small size.

How it feels

The drawing surface is awesome: slick and smooth with no skips or lag. Wacom has always made quality tablets so there’s no surprise that the pen responsiveness is spot-on.

The real difference between this tablet and its predecessors (and other tablets in Wacom’s lineup) are the customizable hot buttons down the side of the tablet. I work so much faster with my buttons set up the way I like them, because I can hold the tablet with my left and right hand and never waste time lifting my arm to the keyboard. This is also much easier on my shoulders and upper back, which are prone to repetitive stress pain if I sag my left hand over the keyboard for hours on end.

Configuring the Wacom Intuos Pro

You can configure the tablet, pen, and button shortcuts on a per-application basis. If you plan to use your new Wacom with Photoshop, hit the + button on the right and add Photoshop as an application, then do your customization there.

Most of these settings are self-explanatory and everyone kind of has their own preferences, so try a variety of mappings if you aren’t sure what you like. I like to map the rocker button on the pen to “i” and “b” so I can sample a color from my canvas (i) and switch back to brush (b) quickly in Photoshop. I like to map the wheel to [ and ], which decrease and increase the brush size in Photoshop, respectively.

My Wacom history

I got my first Wacom in 2003 (Intuos 2), my second one in 2007 (Intuos 3), and the Pro is my third Wacom tablet. The 2 got passed on to my sister and the 3 is still going strong (I now use it at my weekend place).

All of my Wacom tablets survived years of heavy use. The plastic nibs have worn out but the surface and tablet hardware itself have remained strong, and Wacom has continued to support (with drivers) even my oldest tablet. Because of this, I’m convinced Wacom tablets are more or less immortal, and I feel confident buying yet another one from their brand.

Why I don’t recommend Cintiq

Research Wacom tablets long enough and you’re bound to feel tempted by the Cintiq, a large monitor/tablet-in-one. The appeal, of course, is that you don’t experience the separation of hand from “canvas” with a Cintiq like you do with an ordinary tablet.

Some people swear by them, but I’m not one of those people.

A sharp pain developed in my upper back and no matter how I positioned it, the pain persisted and worsened

I didn’t like my hand blocking my work

I felt guilty about “using it up” any time I used it as a normal monitor for say, gaming or writing

It was heavy (newer models are lighter) but I only have an IKEA desk and I was convinced I’d come home to find my expensive Cintiq on the floor surrounded by a pile of particleboard

I couldn’t bring it anywhere with me

Basically, the Cintiq felt like a step back from the small, comfortable Intuos tablets I can place in my lap and bring with me. This is why I don’t really recommend Cintiq. Your mileage may vary, but if you’re curious, most of the professional artists I know and have worked with are content to work on an Intuos.

Wacom’s new Intuos naming scheme

The first thing I noticed when shopping for my next tablet was that Wacom now offers a bewildering selection of entry level and mid range tablets.

These “entry level” tablets are the Intuos Draw, Intuos Art, Intuos Photo, and Intuos Comic. Prices vary because their feature sets and bundled software vary by tablet. They feature a dotted black drawing surface and four buttons at the top:

Wacom really diluted their line with these tablets, which I think mostly serve to confuse potential customers and add more research time to a Wacom purchase.

Even though these tablets are marketed towards a particular purpose (“draw anime!”, “edit photos!”), you’re not actually going to be limited to “just drawing” or “just photo editing” if you choose one of these tablets over another.

If you already have the software you want to use and you want to get one of these tablets, just buy based on color or features (such as the Intuos Art’s touch feature).

Intuos Pro vs. Intuos Draw, Intuos Art, etc

These are cute, but I think most artists will outgrow them quickly. If you intend to use your tablet regularly, it’s worth the extra cost to get an Intuos Pro.

Here’s why:

The Intuos Draw, Art, etc buttons are in an awkward location near the top. Also, you only get 2 per side, not six like you do with the Pro.

There’s no touch wheel on these lower end tablets, and the touch wheel is awesome. You can map the touch wheel to a number of things, including brush size adjustment, which I’d be really lost without.

The bundled software doesn’t do much for me either, since I use Photoshop. I think it’s better to buy an Intuos and then buy whatever software you want to use with it.

Artist Aaron Rutten has an excellent 5 minute video comparing these tablets, which is where I learned enough to know that I wanted a Pro instead.

This is the tablet I’d get for someone if you aren’t sure that person will actually stick with a digital art hobby and just wants to give it a try. I’d definitely consider this tablet for a kid or a pre-teen. After all, it’s hard to argue with that price.

If your ambition is to become a professional artist, though, and you’re already working towards that goal and/or are in art school, I think it’s worth it to invest in the better tool and get the Intuos Pro instead.

Who should get a Wacom tablet

If you think you’d be better/faster with a tablet, you should seriously consider getting one. Illustrators, cartoonists, animators, photographers doing retouching by mouse would all benefit from a tablet.

I rarely use my tablet for “layout” work (like, I don’t use it if I’m making a mockup of what a website might look like) but I do use it for anything I would otherwise freehand.

My tablet completely replaced my old “draw on paper then scan” workflow, which was nice – saved me a lot of paper, pencils, eraser dust all over the place, and let me get rid of my scanner.

The bottom line

The Intuos Pro is awesome; I’m thrilled with it and happily using it to sketch and paint in Photoshop. This tablet is the best of Wacom’s current offerings: a step up from their low-end Intuos line (Intuos Draw, Art, Comic, Photo) in all the right ways, but not bank-breaker like the Cintiq.

You want a guest network that exists in parallel to your real one, for guests to use without gaining access to the rest of your network

You have a bleeding-edge device or network card that supports faster data speeds than your current router supports

You’re tired of paying your ISP a monthly fee for a junky router

Asus AC68U Router Review

TL;DR: it’s excellent, we love it, and we recommend it to everyone who asks us for router recommendations.

If your home is home to a few laptops, desktop computers, a TV streaming device like Roku or Chromecast, a couple gaming consoles, a bunch of mobile phones, and perhaps a smart thermostat or Amazon Echo (like ours is), this is the router for you.

It’s the best balance of price and specs and won’t be obsolete anytime soon.

Asus AC68U Router Highlights

Outstanding range – the AC68U eliminated dead WiFi spots in and immediately outside of even the largest home we tried it in

Adaptive QoS – prioritizes traffic and lets you see which device is using the bandwidth. You can also set priorities on devices – keep your PS4 high priority and Netflix lower priority, so TV gets buffered while gaming doesn’t get lagged

Homes we tested the Asus AC68U in

a 3,300 sq ft two-story standalone home built in the 1980s (my parents’ home). The router is on the 2nd story at the far end of the house.

a 3,500 sq ft three-story standalone home built in the 1990s (my partner’s parents’ home). The router is on the first floor at a far corner of the house.

a 1,300 sq ft one-story attached ranch built in the 1990s with basement (my sister’s home). The router is on the only floor, at one end of the house.

another 1,300 sq ft one-story duplex ranch built in 2011 (our house). The router is on the only floor, located roughly centrally in the home.

These setups are not textbook ideal. Because of where the cable comes in, the two biggest homes in our sample have the router placed up against a wall at a far end of the house. Both of these houses (our parents’ houses) were notorious for dead zones in like 1/3rd of the house, dropped WiFi connections, weak WiFi connections, and lots of pausing/buffering while streaming before they upgraded to the Asus.

In my sister’s 1,300 sq ft home, the router is on the first floor (along an outside wall) but the computers and gaming systems are in the basement below. Even in this case, the WiFi signal is strong.

However, despite all these “less than perfect” setups, all four homes have a strong WiFi signal everywhere inside the houses and even some more signal out in the yard. That’s how awesome this router is.

These four houses vary in construction materials, broadband supplier, the number of WiFi networks nearby, and the demands placed on the network, but the signal strength is excellent in all four.

In short, this router is awesome for big houses, even if you can’t position it somewhere “ideal”.

What’s in the box?

Asus RT-AC68U dual-band gigabit router

Power cord

Ethernet cord

Setup booklet

Setup CD

Router setup

It’s so fast and easy, I didn’t bother to document it. It’s like a 6-step wizard and the hardest part is naming your network (pick a good one – but just in case you don’t, you can easily change it later).

Regular security updates

Firmware updates come about once a month and contain security updates, bug fixes, UI improvements, and even new features like the recently-added traffic analyzer.

This regular support keeps the router up to date against newly discovered security vulnerabilities, and helps the router’s feature set stay competitive with new competitor models. Also great: Asus accepts bug fixes from the developer community, meaning there’s even more people scrutinizing the router’s capabilities and security features.

Good control panel design

Once you’re all set up, visit 192.168.1.1 in your browser to access the control panel.

From here, you can view connected devices and their bandwidth usage, change the network’s name, password, and security type, and adjust a variety of settings.

I’ve managed a lot of routers over the years and this interface is definitely my favorite.

Connected Devices (“Clients”)

See a list of all currently connected devices.

Guest Network

Use the “guest network” feature to give your visitors an “Internet only” version of your network. This is an excellent security feature, as it lets your guests surf the web without also getting access to any computers, files, or equipment you might have otherwise have available over the network.

Traffic by app, traffic by client

This is another cool feature of the Asus RT-AC86U: use it to see where your bandwidth goes, by app and by client (user).

PPTP VPN

One of the biggest reasons we chose the Asus RT-86U over its competitors was for the PPTP VPN connection capabilities.

With Open VPN (which is what a lot of competitor models have) you need third party software to log into your network (which may or may not be available for your OS). With PPTP VPN, the VPN software is basically in the router’s OS, and you can VPN in from anything (your Android phone, your Macbook, etc), with no need for third party software.

If you’re never going to use VPN, this probably isn’t something you care about, but if you’re hoping to make use of VPN, this is a great feature to have at your disposal.

The only real difference between the 1900 and the 1750 is the maximum possible throughput. As explained earlier in this review, the only devices that hit the full 1900 throughout are those that can combine the two separate signals – 802.11AC(1300Mbps over 5G) and 802.11N(600Mbps over 2.4G) to make 190Mbps.

We found only a negligible price difference between the 1900 and the 1750 when we were router shopping, so we went with the 1900 to be a bit more future-proof with our purchase.

Asus AC1900 vs. Netgear AC1750

Astute readers might recall that we have a Netgear AC1750 in our city apartment. The Netgear AC1750 is still an excellent router. The only reason we chose the Asus AC1900 over another one for the house (which is 100 miles away and we only get to on weekends and holidays) was for the Asus’s stronger VPN support, which we use regularly.

Why buy a router when you can lease one from your cable company?

You might already be leasing your router from your cable company (it might even be the kind of device that’s both router and modem in one). Maybe that’s working for you, but you might be having one or more of the following problems:

WiFi dead zones in your house

intermittent loss of WiFi signal to devices

interruptions to streaming (pauses in Netflix, lots of YouTube buffering)

disconnects during online gaming

interference from other networks and/or Bluetooth devices

a pang of regret every month as you pay another $10 towards renting a device when you could buy a much better one

Just a few years ago, the only people who really wanted or benefitted from a better router than the one you could lease from your cable company were gamers and people pirating media by the truckload. Nowadays, everyone and their mother is streaming, gaming, and surfing the web simultaneously on one home network.

If you’re in a heavy use household, and you have any of the above problems, then a better router would probably make a big difference. You’ll also get features like traffic analyzer, the ability to prioritize certain types of traffic higher than other types, parental controls – all features that are usually absent from ISP-provided routers.

Some important things to keep in mind

These things are true about any router, not just this one.

Your download speeds are still limited by your Internet connection

It’s not going to turn your crappy rural DSL into a blindingly fast downloading machine, but it will make the most of what you give it and spread it far and wide.

Upgrading to wireless AC should cut down on interference

You might be familiar with the ever-changing alphabet soup of router letters. For a while, it was wireless B, then wireless G, wireless N, and now wireless AC.

AC is the newest technology, and it operates on the 5Ghz band. Most routers are still wireless N, which is on the 2.4Ghz band (as are Bluetooth devices). If you live in a dense area with loads of neighboring WiFi networks (or you make use of Bluetooth music players, keyboards, mice, etc in your home) you might see a big improvement in signal quality just from getting off the crowded spectrum.

Antenna orientation matters

As with any router, you’ll need to orient the antennas. They don’t “blast” signal out their tips – it’s more like they make a flat plane of signal that’s parallel to the antenna itself. When in doubt, point one straight up and one perpendicular to it (that is, parallel to the floor).

The bottom line

We put this router through hell – we subjected it to online multiplayer gaming, streaming to a PSVita 100 miles away from its parent Playstation 4, streaming YouTube videos, huge downloads, and more (most of it simultaneously).

We ran speed tests all over our parents’ houses, both of which are over 3,000 sq. feet, and neither of which have the router in an “ideal” location (both just stuffed it up against the wall where the cable came in), and found little to no drop in signal strength.

This router is a beast, we totally <3 it – you can’t go wrong with this router!

Kenmore Elite washers are REALLY quiet

This washing machine is quiet. It also has a button for toggling the “done beep” volume: loud, normal, and off (this is also true of the dryer).

The first few times I ran the washer I could not even believe it was running. My machines are in a room (with a real door, not a louvered door) next to my living room, so I had ample opportunity to hear (or not hear) them in action. I made these videos to demonstrate just how quietly these machines run.

Washer washing a pillow

The vast majority of a cycle is just washing/tumbling the load.

Notice the machine doesn’t get thrown off balance by the uneven load, and the amount of water/soap is appropriate for the size of the load (a normal size pillow, two pillow cases, and four shirts).

My previous machine was a HE top-loading agitator-less machine that would make a repetitive grinding noise as it cycled laundry in and out of the water, so this gentle hum seems very quiet by comparison. It’s even quieter with a normal load (not a pillow flopping around).

Washer doing its spin cycle

Washer doing the last 2 minutes of its spin cycle

The last 2 minutes of the spin cycle is the loudest thing I’ve heard this machine do, and honestly, I think it comes off louder in the video than it does in real life.

Dryer doing normal drying

While I was researching machines, it was hard to find information on how noisy various machines are, or how annoying those noises might be.

My previous home had a set of 2010-era Maytag Bravos machines (top loading HE washer) and the washer was so loud and annoying. It went vrrm vrrm vrrm vrrm vrrm as it moved laundry in and out of the pool of water at the bottom of the wash basin, and the repetitive noise drove me nuts. I often started laundry and the left the house for some errand so I wouldn’t have to listen to it.

Drum capacity: huge

My city apartment has a compact washer and dryer, so it’s pretty nice to blow through a ton of laundry in just a few big loads. You don’t have to do big loads, though – there’s a setting for “small load”, too.

Interface design: excellent

Washer interface

The buttons on this machine are straightforward: rotate the knob to select your load type, toggle any settings you want to be particular about, and hit the play button.

Use the buttons at right to set temperature, spin speed, soil level, and beep volume. The “—” is where “time remaining” for the current load displays.

Dryer Interface

Same idea as the washer, turn the dial to choose a mode.

Without “Static shield” on, the first couple loads came out really clingy. Once we turned this setting on, that problem went away.

Performance: Excellent

The comforter challenge

I have had a particular big, fluffy queen-size comforter for at least 15 years and I’ve washed it in more machines than I can remember. I sent it through a wash and a dry cycle in the Kenmore Elites.

It was pretty dry at the end of the washer’s spin cycle and didn’t throw the machine off balance or reach the end of the cycle with suds still in the tub (both common problems I’ve had with other washing machines in the past). It took just one dryer cycle to dry it, not two or more like some older machines have required.

The pillow challenge

Likewise, I have a large fluffy pillow that I’ve had for a few years now. It is notorious for throwing agitator-style washing machines off balance, but the Kenmore Elite handled it just fine (I washed it on “Bulky”). The washer even did a good job of spinning most of the moisture out of it. It took one and a half dryer cycles to dry it (I ran it on “Bulky”).

The bottom line

These are fantastic laundry machines. It’s hard to know how many years you’ll get out of a newly purchased appliance, but if I run into any trouble I’ll come back and update this review.

Kenmore changes its line frequently, but if you’re reading this from the future there’s a good chance that the Kenmore Elite line has only gotten better since this article’s creation in May 2016.

Hue Pro is awesome. This little 99 cent app from a third party developer is everything the official Philips Hue app should have been. It’s been the Android Hue app of choice for well over a year, but there was no good equivalent on iOS. Some apps could do a few things well, but none seemed to have complete mastery over the Philips Hue ecosystem the way Hue Pro did.

Make presets with ease! First thing you see in Hue Pro is a list of all your presets. This makes it super easy to instantly change the color of your bulbs. Add your own preset by tapping the + in the upper right corner. Modify each bulb to your liking and save.

Color picker! Instead of selecting a photo and picking colors out of it to create your Hue light palette (it’s as terrible as it sounds) you can just pick colors out of a color picker. It’s so easy in Hue Pro! Pick a lightbulb, pick a color, save, repeat.

Good preset palettes. Hue Pro comes with some excellent color palette presets, and it’s easy to add your own (click the + button). My favorite presets are Blue Rain and Love Shack, but most of ’em are pretty nice. At the bottom is one of my own presets.

Manage all your bulbs. See how there are three colored boxes next to each preset name? Each one represents a bulb attached to this location’s Hue hub. (In other words, I’m in my apartment where I have 3 Hue bulbs.) Over at my house, I’ve got 7.

This screenshot is from the Android version of Hue Pro.

You might notice that some presets don’t even include all the bulbs. That’s because you can toggle the “HS” slider to keep some bulbs off when using a particular preset. Below, I’ve made a preset that only lights the desk lamp.

Great menu design. Over in the hotdog menu (tap the 3 parallel bars in the upper left) you’ll find quick links to the various sections of the Hue Pro app: your presets, bulbs, schedules, settings, and more. Clean and simple – awesome!

The settings page offers tons of tweaks and ways to manage your Hue lights. Hue Pro does more than just change bulb colors: you can adjust your bridge settings, manage geofencing, make backups of your settings, and more.

I’m so happy to see this app land on iOS – great job, Prismatic LLC – what a happy surprise for this iOS user who was wishing for a better Hue app!

I’m still super in love with my Amazon Echo, so I pre-ordered an Amazon Tap when it was announced and eagerly awaited its March 31st arrival. I was hoping for a slimmer, lighter, less-expensive alternative to my Bose Mini SoundLink and while the Tap lags behind my Bose in terms of audio quality, I found many other reasons to love the Tap over the past several days.

Read on for my hands-on Amazon Tap review!

Amazon Tap speaker is smaller than Echo and portable (up to 9 hours on battery charge)

Amazon Tap review: the Tap at a glance

Tap is basically a smaller, portable Echo with some notable tradeoffs. Its primary function is to be a portable Bluetooth speaker, but it’s greatest weakness is its bass quality. It’s not bad audio, per se, and oddly enough – it seems to have gotten better after using it for several days – but it’s definitely not the room-filling bass you’d get with a Bose Color Mini or a Bose Mini SoundLink (two similarly priced Bluetooth speakers that I already own and use around my home).

The big Tap advantage, of course, are that you get access to all that Alexa has to offer in this speaker (provided you have it on a WiFi network – no Alexa at the beach). It used to be that you had to hit the microphone button to wake up Alexa, but Amazon updated the software to allow Alexa to be “always listening” on a Tap.

You can ask Alexa to announce the weather, ask her to play one of your Amazon Music playlists, ask her adjust your home’s temperature (if you have a smart thermostat that is Alexa compatible such as the Ecobee3), or turn your lights off (like I do every day with my Alexa-integrated Phillips Hue).

There’s more: the Tap holds about 9 hours of battery life, which is competitive with other Bluetooth speakers in its price range. It’s also one of the more portable Bluetooth speakers I’ve ever owned, weighing about 1 pound and with no hard edges and no particular “facing direction”.

How is Amazon Tap different from the Amazon Echo?

Tap runs on an internal battery charge (up to 9 hours), whereas Echo must always be plugged in to a power source

Tap has a 3.5mm audio in jack – note this is not for headphones, it’s for audio input

Tap is smaller than Echo – the Tap is maybe 65% of the size of an Echo

Tap can be tap activated or voice activated – you can decide whether the Alexa in your Tap is “always listening” or only listens when you press the microphone button. The other on-unit buttons let you skip songs, change volume, turn it on/off. This is true even when the Tap is docked.

Tap is supposedly a slightly, but not significantly, better speaker than Echo (both are 360 degree omnidirectional speakers, though) but I think the bass is lacking

Tap costs less than an Echo

What do Amazon Tap and Amazon Echo have in common?

Both Tap and Echo have access to Alexa, Amazon’s voice-controlled “smart hub” system. You can issue all the same Alexa commands to Tap as you can to Echo (just press the mic button first).

Both are 360 degree omnidirectional speakers

Both support streaming/playing music to the device over Bluetooth and WiFi

Amazon Echo and Amazon Tap side by side – notice the Tap is smaller and has more on-unit controls.

What is Amazon’s Echo Dot for?

It’s a voice activated “control center” that you hook up (via Bluetooth or the included aux cable) to another speaker set, such as a Tap, a Bose system, a Sonos system, or your choice. (I don’t own an Echo Dot). Echo Dot has its own little speaker inside, but the idea is to take the brains of the Echo and transplant them onto whatever (presumably awesome) speaker system you happen to already own.

Think of Echo Dot as Amazon’s way of saying, “You don’t like our speakers? Fine, you can hook this Echo Dot up to your own speakers – and still enjoy our voice-activated Alexa stuff”. It’s the best of both worlds.

How does the Tap audio quality compare to other Bluetooth speakers?

The Tap’s audio quality is about what you’d get from a $120-ish Bluetooth speaker. It lags behind similarly priced speakers from Bose. It’s strength is in the Alexa integration – if you only care about audio quality, get a Dot and hook it up to a better speaker.

Weirdly enough, I thought the Tap sounded borderline terrible right out of the box, but after a weekend of heavy use, I swear it sounds much better. My partner insists this is because it’s gone through the speaker break-in period, which I’d never heard of before but it makes sense and the Internet agrees it’s a thing and the Tap really does sound better after many hours of use.

I also don’t think I just got Stockholmed into accepting it – when I compare side-by-side with my Bose Mini SoundLink after a weekend of use, the difference between them is still noticeable (the Bose sends waves of bass through my desk) but the Tap isn’t THAT far behind – not as much as it was when I first unboxed it.

If audio quality is everything to you, though, then look at the speakers Bose makes. I can personally recommend the Bose SoundLink Color (slightly less expensive than the Tap) and the Bose Mini SoundLink (slightly pricier than the Tap).

The Bose SoundLink Color in particular has a much fuller audio range than the Tap, comparable battery life, and identical on-unit controls. (However, it’s worth mentioning that the SoundLink Color is 50% (half a pound) heavier and slightly larger than the Tap).

Bluetooth Connectivity

The Tap really stands out at connecting over Bluetooth quickly and painlessly.

The best thing? You can wake up the Tap speaker over Bluetooth without first having to press a button on the Tap to turn it on. This means you don’t have to get out of bed to fire up the Tap, just connect to it from your phone. (As if my Echo wasn’t already contributing to a massive amount of laziness around here.) This works whether the Tap is on its base or not.

This ease of connectivity merits mention because of the many struggles I’ve had in the past with getting my family’s various iPhones and my partner’s LG to sync with various Bluetooth devices, including my Subaru Forester, his (incredible sounding) Bose SoundLink III and my own (beloved) Bose Mini SoundLink.

Bluetooth can be janky and annoying to get connected, so when the Tap just quickly accepted my phone (and my partner’s phone) it was like wow.

Amazon Tap unboxing

Just like its Echo ancestor the Amazon Tap arrives in a beautifully packed box. The narrow box to the right of the speaker unit contains the charge cable, wall adapter, charge base, and a small instruction booklet.

Inside the box

Amazon Tap speaker hardware

charging cradle

USB cable for charging via cradle or Tap unit

wall-outlet adapter so you can charge from a traditional electric socket

Tap’s charge base

Something I noticed right away with the Tap is how perfectly it docks with its cradle. With similar Bluetooth speakers, I’ve encountered occasional ambiguity over whether the speaker was actually docked or not.

Not so with Tap – it’s pretty much impossible to set it on the base in a way that makes it look properly docked without it actually being docked.

Back of Tap unit (pairing and power)

3.5mm audio jack (so you can take audio input from another source, such as a tablet or TV)

a Mini USB charge port (use as an alternative to the charging dock base)

pairing button that is used to enter Bluetooth pairing mode or to help it get on your WiFi network.

The narrow port above the pairing button is the Micro USB port. You can charge the Tap via its cradle or plug it into the charge cable directly. Not having the bring the cradle with for charging makes the Tap even more portable.

If you already have an Echo

Think of Tap like a second generation Echo instead of an addition to an existing family. Echo and Tap do not communicate with each other.

I know, I was bummed about this too, and there’s a chance that it might change with a firmware update in the future. I mean, why not? Why not have the option to have the Tap listen for Alexa commands as long as it’s plugged in or on its base? I could see some potential for conflict if they both use the same wake word, but this problem doesn’t seem insurmountable.

Taking Amazon Tap along for a ride

My Tap is surprisingly well-traveled for having only been in my possession for a few days. Already, it has watched over several games of pool down in my apartment’s rec room and ridden along for many miles on a muddy bike trail.

Below, I stuffed the Tap speaker into my bike bag, turned up the volume, and became the only party bike on the trail Saturday morning. If you’re heading out with a group of people this summer, be it for a picnic, a trip to the beach, a party at someone’s backyard pool, a ride on the bike trail – you might get a kick out of having the Tap along to play some music for your group. My partner and I definitely did.

What could Tap do better?

It’s a competent entry into the low-end Bluetooth speaker market, so my wishlist is pretty short on this one:

Better bass – I am all about that bass, and even after the break-in period, the Tap isn’t quite where similarly priced offerings from Bose are on bass levels.

(I used to have an item here for “let it be always listening like the normal Echo” but Amazon added that, so this list got shorter!)

The bottom line

It’s a solid speaker with a lot of nice extras thanks to Alexa integration. If you already have an Echo and want to keep doing things you do with the Echo, you can keep doing them with a Tap.

Mostly, it’s about tradeoffs: with a comparably priced Bose, you’ll get richer bass but you won’t get access to Alexa features and I think the Bose physical designs are somewhat less portable than the Tap.